October 29, 2008--Sarah Palin: Spiritual Warrior

From the high end to the low, the ongoing vetting of Sarah Palin includes: her preparedness to be vice president much less president; the truth behind the spin about her life and history up in Alaska; and, how can we resist, fun things like her clothes, hair, makeup, and whether or not she’s a diva, or--as claimed yesterday by a McCain senior advisor--a “whack job.”

Colin Powell dealt best with the former in his incandescent endorsement of Barack Obama and various reporters have been all over her home state rummaging around to find out the truth about Troopergate, her actual tax and spending practices, the truth about the infamous Bridge to Nowhere, how much of a maverick she has really been, and of course if one can really see Russia from her hometown.

In the fun and gossip realm, besides her wardrobe we can’t get enough about Todd, which newspapers she reads, and her involvement with an African witch doctor.

In regard to that Kenyan preacher, Thomas Muthee, who visited her church in Alaska to lay hands on her in order to anoint her when she ran for governor, we can see for ourselves that he also came there to protect her from possession by witches. This ceremony, captured on video, is a YouTube favorite.

But behind the comic relief this provides lurks what may in fact be most disturbing and least examined about the prospect of Sarah Palin becoming vice president. It reveals deeper truths about her religious beliefs.

Beyond mentioning God in almost every paragraph in her stump speeches, she remains remarkably silent, even secretive about the detail of her faith. One would think that someone who sees herself as so representing traditional values such as family and church would not keep so much about her spiritual life off the record.

Thanks, though, to an intrepid New York Times reporter we now know more about the full range of those beliefs. (Article linked below.)

To get a glimpse of this there is a second videotape that shows Sarah Palin this June in her Wassila church nodding exaggeratedly while her former preacher prays over her and speaks about how Alaska is “one of the refuge states in the Last Days.”

For those of you not up on your eschatology—the study of the Last Things on those Last Days—he was referring to that time when the Rapture will occur and God will take all true Christians, soul and body together, right up to heaven, leaving the rest of us to struggle through the horrors of strife and warfare that will follow the appearance on earth of the Antichrist (some say he is none other than Barack Obama!) while waiting 1,000 years for the actual Christ’s return, the end of all earthly life, the Last Judgment, and Resurrection.

When all this occurs, Alaska, because of its geographic isolation will be one of the best places on earth to get through this nightmare. That’s why the good governor was nodding along so enthusiastically: not only does she believe this extra-biblical prophesy but she also must have been feeling fortunate to be leading the one state in America so blessed.

Maybe this is what the McCain aide meant yesterday when he referred to her as a whack job. Though I doubt it. McCain has been pandering to those many millions in America who share these beliefs. That’s at least half the reason he selected her to be his running mate—to appeal to these millennialists. I hesitate to speculate about the other half of the reason why he found her so compelling.